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Hey! People call me Tea. For the longest time, it had nothing to do with my love of the drink. How convenient that I should develop an appreciation and slight obsession for this amazing plant!

Now, Im not a tea guru, I will never claim any of my experiences or findings as fact, but I am very excited to share my thoughts and learn new things about this fascinating culture!

I grew up thinking that all tea came in a bag. Preparation was always the same. We would pour boiling water in a coffee cup and let the bag sit in the water for hours. (I always figured...the longer the bag steeped, the better it was for you. Turns out I was wrong!) When I moved to Toronto, my first job here was as a barista for a big coffee chain. I made iced tea beverages and sold tea bags in paper cups. Nothing special but I began to notice a trend of "whole leaf" teas in bags and started looking into higher quality bagged teas. I found a few and it only fuelled my curiosity more.

My first loose tea was a white tea with peach flavours. Naturally, I had no idea how to prepare it so I was left with a cup of burnt sludge. I dropped loose leaf tea for awhile.

After a few more jobs in little indie cafes, I was re-acquainted with loose leaf teas from suppliers around the city. I bought myself a little white tea pot with a basket filter in it and started collecting a few simple teas. Green sencha, a plain Yerba Mate and a variety of herbals. It was fun for awhile but I got bored of herbals and was frustrated by how astringent my green teas tasted!

Little did I know, I would score a job in a tea shop. I learned about the history of tea, the benefits of different tea and even found out that it is all from the same plant! I had no idea!. After learning how tea is processed to produce white, green, oolong and black teas, it made sense that each variety of tea would require different water temperatures and steep times. No wonder my green and white teas tasted like burnt grass!

After being introduced to the seemingly endless world of tea, I began doing my own research on my days off....I am now a self proclaimed tea nut. I will be sharing as much information as I can but I will start with the basics.